Moloka'i (8 page)

Most people thought the whole thing would simply blow over. Henry’s own father reminded him of another coup—engineered by a rogue British consul, not unlike this man Stevens—which overthrew the king when Maka had been a small boy. (Assignment to Hawai'i seemed to bring out the worst kind of colonialist megalomania in foreign diplomats.) When word of that coup reached England, the British government wasted no time reversing the consul’s actions and restoring the Hawaiian monarchy. “The same will happen this time,” he assured Henry. Surely, he maintained, as great and freedom-loving a country as the United States could not allow such a fla-grant miscarriage of justice to long stand.

R

achel never stopped missing her Uncle Pono, but she made other friends at Kalihi, especially Francine, whose pixieish looks belied the heart of a true hellion. Once Rachel overcame her dread of her roommate’s clawed hand, the two became fast friends and partners in crime, principally frivolous escape. One evening at the height of summer, the air as thick with mosquitoes as with humidity, Rachel and Francine sneaked past the night watchmen, climbed the six-foot wire fence behind the hospital, and took a refreshing dip in Kalihi Bay. Their absence was discovered almost immediately (it wasn’t hard to follow the sounds of splashing and giggling) and they were confined to their room for a week. But this didn’t discourage them from other excursions over the fence, such as the occasional trip to buy ice cream; and they began to accumulate a disquieting number of black marks on their record.

On a particularly hot, muggy day in July, as Rachel and other
keiki
kept cool by tossing handfuls of drinking water at each other, a group of adult inmates listened to a riveting newspaper account from the island of Kaua'i—where a leper named Ko'olau and his family had successfully evaded capture by hiding in the thickly wooded Kalalau Valley. When Deputy Sheriff Louis Stolz finally tracked them down, Ko'olau told him he would only go to Moloka'i if his wife and child could accompany him. Stolz flatly refused, despite the fact that there was a long custom of allowing healthy spouses (though not children) to go to Moloka'i as
k
kuas
—helpers. The family fled again into the lush recesses of the valley. When police pursued them, Ko'olau shot Stolz dead with his rifle, wounded two other officers, and inadvertently caused the death of a fourth.

When the man reading the paper finished, there was a long silence. Then an elderly man spoke up, saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?”—and everyone within hearing roared with laughter.

The Goto treatments helped heal some patients’ sores, but Rachel showed no particular improvement; the sore on her thigh was still there, as was the one on her left foot, but at least she got no worse. In November, after a year at Kalihi, it was time to reevaluate her condition. Once again Rachel was told to take off her clothes and put on a gown, then brought into the white-tiled examination room, this time to face just one of the doctors who had conducted her initial exam. “Please remove the patient’s gown.” As it fell around her feet Rachel tried to give him the stink-eye, but his gaze never met hers—it just tracked across her body as a butcher might inspect a spoiled cut of meat. The nurse jotted down his comments as the doctor noted dispassionately, “Female, Hawaiian, age—seven, is it?—eyebrows intact, no sign of alopecia. Face not affected. Open your mouth, please.” He stuck in a tongue depressor and peered inside. “Slight thickening in roof of mouth, extending back to soft palate. No indication of tubercular-leprous vegetations. Hold out your hands?”

He looked over her hands, still free of blemishes. “Hands, fingers, appear not to be affected.” He examined her feet, poking at her left foot with a sharp needle. “Small patch of scaly dry skin on left foot, with anesthesia.” He worked his way up to the spot on her thigh. “Red ringed tubercle on inside of right thigh, skin thick, anesthesia present. Genital development,” and here he put a gloved hand between her thighs, “appears to be normal.” He palpated her groin, and Rachel flinched.

“That hurts!”

“Skin of the groin shows some sensitivity,” he noted, otherwise ignoring her discomfort; Rachel jerked away.

“Stop it!” she yelled.

“Please stand still,” the doctor responded curtly, reaching again for her groin. Angrily, Rachel reached for
his
groin—grabbed and squeezed, as he had done to her.

The doctor howled so vigorously that Rachel immediately let go and jumped back a good two feet. He doubled over in exquisite distress, and the nurse, deciding on her own initiative that the examination was over, threw Rachel’s gown over her and hastened her out of the room.

She was taken back to the dormitory and never heard another thing about the incident, but less than a month later her parents received a terse letter in the mail:

BOARD OF HEALTH

November 10, 1893

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Kalama:

You are advised that at a regular meeting of the Board of Health, held on November 7, 1893, after a full assessment of your daughter’s records it was decided that continued treatment is no longer of any benefit to her, and voted that she be transferred to the Leprosarium on Molokai
.

She is to be transported by steamer SS
Mokolii
, leaving at 5 P.M.
,
November 30, 1893
.

By direction of the President and the Executive Officer, Board of Health
,

William O. Smith

Henry and Dorothy went at once to see the head administrator at Kalihi; but though he grudgingly agreed to postpone Rachel’s transfer until after Christmas, he coldly insisted she must and would be transferred to Moloka'i. Whether it was true that the treatments were ineffective, or whether Rachel was being punished for troublesome behavior, they couldn’t tell; all that was certain was that in less than two months’ time their little girl would be on her way to the open grave known as Kalaupapa.

At home that night they argued as vociferously as ever. “Seven years old, she can’t go alone,” Dorothy said. “I’ll go with her;
k
kua
her.”

“You got three other kids to take care of,” Henry said. “I’ll go.”

“And who’s gonna work, put food on the table?” Dorothy asked. “Ben and Kimo and Sarah, they’re gonna go hungry ’cause their papa’s gone to Moloka'i?”

In the end, the bleak truth was that neither of them could go, even if the government allowed it, which, as Ko'olau could have told them, increasingly it did not. The only consolation—more consolation than many a family had—was that Pono was already on Moloka'i. His heart breaking, Henry wrote his brother to ask if he would take care of Rachel.

Henry barely slept that week. He walked the house at night, looking at Rachel’s dolls, her toys—knowing that he would never see his daughter here, in this house, ever again. He wept inconsolably, mourning a girl still alive, wishing that his skin would erupt in hideous sores so that he might yet accompany her to Moloka'i. He loved all his children, but now he was forced to admit to himself that he loved Rachel best, and that rended his heart even more.

The next day they went to see her, Rachel and her parents separated as ever by the wire mesh barrier as a guard stood outside, and Henry told her the truth.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” he said. “The Board of Health says you gotta go to Kalaupapa.”

Rachel stared at him, not quite comprehending.

“Are you . . . coming with me?” she asked.

Henry wanted to die. “No, baby, I can’t.”

Rachel’s eyes went fearfully to her mother. “Mama? Will you go with me?”

Fighting back tears, unable to speak, Dorothy shook her head.

“You said I was gonna stay here till I was cured, then go home!” Rachel accused, and her father sagged in his seat, feeling now the full weight of his lie.

“I know, honey,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

Dorothy found her voice. “Your Uncle Pono’s there, Rachel. You’ll live with him, he’ll take care of you.”

“And we’ll come visit you, soon as we can.” The administrator had assured Henry that visitors were allowed, if not exactly encouraged, to go to the settlement.

Rachel tapped new depths of fear as she realized she might never again see the two people she loved most in the world. “I don’t want to go!” she cried out tearfully. “Mama, Papa, don’t make me go!”

Rachel sprang out of her seat and hurled herself against the wire screen, her fingers desperately grasping the wire mesh. Dorothy ran to her, fingers closing around her daughter’s; Rachel pressed her face against the screen and her mother kissed her as best as she could. The guard rushed in to separate them, only to be blocked by Henry Kalama’s imposing figure and dissuaded by the cold fury in his eyes. “Leave ’em be,” Henry warned, and after due consideration the guard backed off and left the room.

Henry and Dorothy touched their daughter the only way they could, through the wire barrier. They wept with her and told her they loved her; that they would always love her; and that someday, maybe, somebody would find a cure for the
ma'i p
k
and she could come home again. Rachel’s face was pressed against the screen and Henry managed to get the tip of one thick finger through, to stroke her cheek. “We come visit you as soon as we can,” he promised. “And I’ll bring you a new doll, all right?”

Rachel sniffed back her tears long enough to ask, “Can I bring my dolls to Kalaupapa?”

Henry nodded. After several more minutes the guard meekly opened the door and told them he was sorry but their time was up, there were other families waiting to use the visiting room. Rachel was returned to the dormitories and fell sobbing onto her bed. Francine comforted her, telling her everything would be all right, that her Uncle Pono was waiting for her, and besides, “I’ll probably go Kalaupapa too, pretty soon. You wait for me, okay?” Rachel smiled and nodded, and it was only the thought of Pono and Francine being on Moloka'i that allowed her to sleep, however fitfully, through the night.